عبد الحي يوسف يسجل هدفا قاتلا فى مرماه.. بقلم صلاح فيصل

FOR the past seven years Christian groups have been ‘buying’ slaves out of captivity in war-torn Sudan. Campaigners such as the English peer, Baroness Caroline Cox, have paid $50 a head to buy their freedom from Arab traders.
The revival of the trade has touched the hearts - and wallets - of millions, particularly in America where schoolchildren have given up their lunch money to redeem Sudanese slaves.

But there is another, hidden, side to this seemingly noble endeavour. According to aid workers, missionaries, and even the rebel group that facilitates it, slave redemption in Sudan is often nothing more than an elaborate scam.

Some genuine slaves have been redeemed - nobody can say how many - but in other cases the process is nothing more than a careful deceit, stage-managed by corrupt officials of the Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA). "The racket is there, right from the top," SPLA official spokesman Samson Kwaje admitted last week. "The money comes from those American kids. But who gets the cheque؟"

https://www.scotsman.com/news/world/fake-slaves-con-aid-agencies-in-sudanese-liberation-scam-1-1360643https://www.scotsman.com/news/world/fake-slaves-con-aid-agencies-in-sudanese-liberation-scam-1-1360643
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There is no doubt that the Khartoum government, which has been fighting the southern SPLA rebels since 1983, is a notorious human rights abuser. The rebels have mainly traditional and Christian beliefs while the government is dominated by Muslim extremists.

Neither is there any doubt that it has deliberately rekindled the slave trade by arming a horseback militia known as the Murahaleen, as a counter-insurgency measure. For almost 20 years the Murahaleen have raided front-line villages in rebel areas, murdering, #####ng and taking thousands of women and children into bondage in the north.

Since 1995 the Swiss-based charity Christian Solidarity International (CSI) has sought to combat slavery by buying the freedom of over 64,000 ‘slaves’.

In theory, CSI arranges for northern Arab traders to buy up the slaves and secretly walk them across the front line to the safety of the rebel-held south. Then CSI flies in, pays the fee per head - between $35 and $50 - and the slaves walk free. Or so it seems.